Submission Requirements

To be considered for a guest post, you’ll need to propose your article. (You can propose up to 3 ideas.) I require the following elements in your proposal:

1. Your Name

Give your name how you’d have it appear in the byline, i.e., “This guest post was written by _____ _____”

2. Vivid title or headline

Without using click-bait or spammy language, create a title that will make readers want to click on your post and read it. It should be descriptive and compelling. Yes: “7 Tips for Writing Realistic Dialogue” No: “You’ll never guess how I chose my book title” or “She could’ve written a book. Instead, she did this.”

In other words, if your title sounds anything like an Upworthy article, you’ll need to come up with something actually descriptive.

3. One-sentence summary of the content

This will be the first sentence of your article. It’s also what readers will see as an excerpt when scrolling through the feed.

4. Experience

To show me that you are qualified to write on the topic, include one of the following:

A brief (<50 word) summary of your qualifications for writing on the subject (can include professional or hobby experience)

A link to your portfolio—with samples of your writing

5. Outline of subheadings

An outline shows me that your post will be organized and will flow logically from one point to the other. It also saves me time when creating a table of contents for the post, because your outline should give me the tentative subheadings you’d use. For example, here’s the TOC from my post on Sub-genres:

Your outline doesn’t be more detailed than that, but you’re welcome to give a sentence description under each heading. Aim for 2–4 subheadings. (My sub-genre post is well over a thousand words, so it has more!)